


You Grew

by fightforyourwrite



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Coping, Drawing, F/M, Friendship, Future Fic, Growing Up, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 23:54:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21217130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fightforyourwrite/pseuds/fightforyourwrite
Summary: Rose Wilson and Bart Allen meet again as adults.





	You Grew

**Author's Note:**

> I noticed that every future version of Bart seems to have hit a growth spurt at one point or another, so I firmly believe that Bart grows up to be taller than Rose as an adult, all while Rose herself is trapped on Team Five Foot Four. 
> 
> Rose is surprisingly short for all her badassery, and Chelsea Zhang on Titans just emphasizes the point even more.

A while ago, Rose Wilson’s therapist had recommended that she find better ways to cope. She had suggested art therapy, which Rose didn’t think would work initially.

Fast-forward a few years and Rose’s first impression of the idea was proven wrong. Besides, there were definitely worse habits to take up in her early twenties.

She now had a modest collection of sketchbooks dedicated to her work, some of them thin and well-kept, others batter and bulging after constant use. Rose even had a smaller sketchbook that she would keep tucked in her pocket in case she got bored.

Her subject matter ranged from simple things, such as animals and objects, to abstract recollections of what she saw in her dreams. They ranged from being colorful and bright to being dreary and dark. 

Rose didn’t consider herself the next Pablo Picasso. In fact, her random doodles of soda cans and fruits proved that she was far from it. But art proved itself to be comforting for her. She loved the feeling of a sharp pencil against smooth, pristine paper. She liked the way her sketchbooks looked when scuffed and overused. 

Art helped her process things like dreams, feelings, and thoughts that she couldn’t express. She found comfort in it. Considering the circumstances of Rose’s life, the fact that she could find comfort in anything was a miracle in itself. 

* * *

The edge of the Island was Rose’s favorite place to work. With Titan’s Tower behind her and the Bay Area in front of her, she would draw to her heart’s desire. She would sit among the rocks, her sketchbook on her lap and a pencil in her hand. She would often doodle until her wrist started to ache.

Across the water was San Francisco, a place she tried to visit on a regular basis. Her visits were mostly relegated to therapist appointments, but she would try to fit in some leisure time to make the trips more enjoyable. 

But even then so, Rose still found it hard to even find time to go there at all. 

Her time nowadays was either spent training for missions, being deployed on them, or helping train the next generation of heroes. Giving ‘how-to-be-a-Titan’ lessons to the team’s fresh meat was surprisingly time consuming. 

During one day in autumn, Rose spent most of the afternoon drawing by the shore. The sound of the breeze and the crashing waves was a soothing sensation, an ambient noise that Rose could listen to forever. 

After an hour of sketching the San Francisco horizon, Rose soon decided that she had done enough drawing for the day. She closed her book and put her pencils back in their case. She gathered up her things and got off the rocks.

It was a short walk to the Tower. As she went, Rose noticed someone standing near the building. As she got closer and the person came into view, she found that it was a person she couldn’t recognize. 

It was a young man who seemed to be about her age. He had a head of rather voluminous auburn hair, it was swept to the side, but some of his messy curls still managed to fall over his forehead. He sported a red harrington jacket and kept his hands in the pockets of it. 

He was currently staring up at the tower. It looked as if he was reminiscing. Perhaps he was one of the numerous members of the team. So many Titans had joined and left the team over the years that it was practically impossible to keep track of them all. 

“Excuse me!” Rose called out. “Are you lost?” 

“I sure as hell hope not,” the stranger replied. He turned his head towards her. Once his gaze settled on her, he gave her a friendly smile. He took his hands out of his pockets and held them up slightly, as if to present some kind of surprise.

Rose blinked, still unable to recognize him. In the back of her memory, she could remember a person with his shade of hair and his tone of voice, she just couldn’t pinpoint who. 

“Freckles? Lightfoot?” the guy said, clearly trying to jog some memories in her head.

It was only when Rose got a look at his golden eyes that she finally realized who he was.

“Bart?” 

His grin grew even wider. “The one and only.” 

Suffice to say, Rose was surprised. 

It felt like years since Rose had seen him on this Island, years since she had heard the chipper sound of his voice.

His hair was a bit neater, his eyes were a bit brighter, and his attire was a bit more polished. His facial features had changed as well, the once soft lines hardening themselves into the face of a young man. He seemed like an echo of the little boy he once was. 

After Rose took him in, she tried to say something smart. She looked up and realized that she had to glance upwards to meet his gaze.

“You grew.”

Bart was flattered, a slight red tint coming to his face. “Yeah, finally hit puberty, huh?” 

Without a moment’s hesitation, Rose took a step forward and wrapped her arms around Bart, encasing him in a hug and practically burying her face in the crook of his neck. He tensed up once she touched him, but after a beat, Rose could feel his arms moving around her.

When they broke apart, Bart was still smiling and seemed a little bit flustered. He pushed his hands a bit deeper into his pockets and regained his composure. 

“So how’ve you been?”

“Horrible,” Rose replied with her usual snark. “Let’s talk inside.”

* * *

Their conversation took place on the roof of Titan’s Tower, on the chairs near the pool. They spoke of many things - education, life, random little stories.

Bart had explained what he had been up to at college. He spared her the more boring details of his computer science degree and cut to the point. 

He was now living in Los Angeles, currently working a tech internship that Tim Wayne may or may not have helped him get. The branch of the lab he worked for was dedicated to making automated machines for the medical field, artificial intelligence for classrooms, and high tech state-of-the-art shower curtains. 

He was also thinking about getting a dog.

It was difficult balancing a heroic career with civilian one, but he figured that being Bart Allen was just as important as being a speedster. In fact, being a speedster should at least make being Bart Allen a little easier, seeing as he almost literally had all the time in the world. 

On the other side of things, Rose spoke about her time training the newbies. Nowadays, Cassie and her could put their animosity aside for the sake of training the next generation of heroes.

The team’s fresh meat seemed to like her, although she had received some complaints (from Cassie) that they did not like her referring to them as “fresh meat.”

The way Bart spoke made his life in L.A seem so cool. He spoke about the people he met, the civilians he saved, the connections he made. 

In Rose’s head, it seemed hard for her to believe that the twenty-two-year-old in front of her was the same fourteen-year-old boy she once knew. 

Then again, Bart was likely thinking the same thing. Rose herself had definitely changed a lot in the last few years. 

“I never thought you’d intern at S.T.A.R. Labs,” Rose remarked.

Bart shrugged. “It was better than interning at LexCorp. They don’t even pay their interns.”

“Seriously?”

“Apparently it’s a ‘cost-cutting-measure’ or some crap like that,” Bart explained, emphasizing his words with some air quotes.

Rose scoffed, shaking her head. 

Bart’s eyes focused on something. He noticed the small sketchbook she had placed beside her on the pool chair.

“So…” he started casually. “What’s in the notebook?” 

“My plans to rule the world,” Rose replied dryly. 

When Bart chuckled in response, she decided to give him the truth.

“I draw a lot now.”

“Since when?”

“Since my therapist recommended it,” Rose told him, taking the sketchbook in her hands. She ran her thumb against the exterior, drawing circles with her thumbs across the leather exterior. “She said it’ll help my stress levels.”

“Is it working?” asked Bart.

“The drawings or the therapist?”

“Both.” 

Rose could only shrug. In the past, she believed that she was a lost cause. The idea that some professional could fix her by asking her questions seemed unreal. The idea that taking some random pills could undo the scars in her head seemed too good to be true.

And in a way, it was. Rose could recall feeling like nothing had changed after her first therapist visit. The feeling persisted when throughout the second and third visit as well.

It was only until the fourth visit and so on did Rose start feeling different. The feeling was hard to describe, perhaps in some people’s eyes she wouldn’t be considered different at all. Only when the routine of going to her shrink’s office in downtown San Francisco was ingrained into her life did she start feeling any sort of change. Taking her medication regularly also seemed to help. 

Maybe it was dumb to believe that she could just press a button and suddenly fix her life. Getting better was a process that took time, and Rose knew that now more than ever. 

“I want to believe that it does,” Rose finally answered to Bart. She held up her sketchbook and opened it up to him. “Wanna rate my work?” She patted the empty space beside her.

Bart nodded and joined her on the pool chair. Their shoulders touched as Rose showed him the pages. 

She flipped through them at random and the drawings Bart saw were, in order: a campfire, a soda can, the skyline of San Francisco, a woman half submerged in water, a watering pail, a sunset where the sky was colored pink and blue and yellow, and a looming figure staring through a crack in a door. 

Some of them had been meticulously colored, while some remained black and white and dreary.

“They get… they get dark sometimes,” Rose admitted. “Fitting, right?” she followed up, letting her trademark snark slipping into her words again. 

Bart observed Rose’s work with the utmost interest. He looked impressed, especially with the watercolor drawings. 

“You’re good at this,” he insisted. “I mean, like, really good.”

Rose’s first impulse was to let out a scoff. “Ha. Is that something you say to all of those L.A girls?”

“Oh yes, all zero of them,” Bart replied with a kind of chaotic chill.

Rose couldn’t help but let out a laugh. “I’ll give that one to you. That was kinda funny.” 

She glanced up briefly. Immediately, Rose noticed that Bart was not looking at the sketchbook pages, but instead had his gaze affixed to her. There was a kind of softness in his eyes, some kind of warmth that radiated from inside. 

“What are you looking at?” Rose asked.

“I uh, uh…” Bart started. He quickly refocused himself on the pages of the book. “Nothing, nothing.” 

Rose looked at him skeptically, but then returned her gaze to the pages as well. 

**Author's Note:**

> It's kind of up in the air on what superhero identity Bart would use as an adult. In my headcanon-y future universe, he asks Max if he can use Mercury as his new hero name when he gets too old to be Kid Flash. And in the meantime, the Impulse title is with Irey.


End file.
